Saturday, February 23, 2008

still you don't regret a single day

i just finished watching across the universe, with julia. we loved it. suppose it is predictable that we do, the way the beatles have been such an integral part of my life, and hers. to be honest, i cannot remember a time in my life that the beatles were not a part of. my mom played their albums continually, singing their songs as lullabies and as the soundtrack to our rides to school, evening meals, and the weekend dinner parties she would host.

when i eventually moved out on my own i lifted a few of her beatles albums and took them with me. part of the reason was my love for the songs, especially off of rubber soul. but, part of it, looking back, was that it was a piece of my mother i could take with me. no matter how shaky and broken our relationship got, and even though i rarely felt secure in her ways of being a mother, she still was that to me...and in the lonely hours between far too late and way too early, when you lie awake and find that you can't sleep, sometimes it is the image and memory of our mother that we cling to.

then there was julia's dad. he loved the beatles in an almost rebellion of his upbringing. he dressed like them, learned to play guitar because of them, fancied the decisions he made to be inspired by them. our mutual love for the music was one of the rare things we had in common, and julia, pretty much the only other thing we shared, well naming her after john lennon's mother, and the song julia, just made sense.

the two of us would sit by her cradle and sing blackbird to her. she claims to remember it, though i'm not sure if it is an authentic memory, or one of those hazy images we create as part of our stories - or because we have heard the story told so much we start to see it when we close our eyes. when lucy sang the lines from it, sitting and facing the ocean, i stole a look at julia and caught the tears in her eyes. i love that music moves her like it does, that she feels it as deeply as i do. it is one of our shared loves, and i think it always will be.